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This is Chanel Bun with the Becker Health
care podcast, and I'm recording the live at
the 20 first annual spine orthopedic and pain
management driven As.
Plus the future of Spine Conference. Right now,
I'm sitting down with, Jonathan Davis, the Ceo
of Clear Pain solutions,
Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me
today? Oh, thanks for having me. Perfect. Well,
to get us started, could you please tell
us a bit about your background and organization?
Yeah. So as you said, I'm the Coo
for Clear pain solutions. I've been there for
approximately 2 years that they might... Your anniversary
hitting in next week or 2. But
before that, I had spent 10 years in
operations for Da vita and dialysis
before thousand business school in Chicago and before
that doing financial services. So a little bit
about my background,
Clear pain solutions. So
we are currently probably the largest
individual pain management practice in the country. We
are currently in about 6 states from new
New Jersey,
Ban, Delaware, Maryland, Florida, Alabama today.
Plans to expand 2 new states by the
end of the year. We have Ban probably
roughly a hundred unique locations between As c's,
offices and lab.
And I think total we have today, maybe
65
positions in total hundred and 35
total providers. So pretty large and and growing
Got it. Thank you so much for that
introduction. Now moving forward. In recent years, there's
been a more... Or an increased
awareness of people's health and wellness,
probably due to more social media, the Internet.
In light of that,
people are seeking out professional opinions less and
less. Why do you think that is? Yeah.
Your great question. I think you hit on
it. Social media, I think.
Over the years what we've seen is just
incredible access information, which has been phenomenal in
a lot of areas, but also problematic in
some, health care being 1 of them
You know, first, you think about Web d,
what that did for everyone. It became the
resource everyone went to if they had an
ache or pain or any kind of issue.
And people were diagnosing themselves myself included.
And then now you see social media where
it's a great place
or information sharing, but also for bad information
sharing.
And I think that's just giving people empower
people to make their own decisions, but also
kinda make their own sometimes bad decisions. And
then when we compare that to the health
care industry, what it is and, you know,
kinda where it is today is, you know,
a lot of patients are finding the elect
trust and it because they don't see their
physician very often. Right? You know, mid level
have kind of entered the... We're seeing a
mid level more so than irrational physician.
You also see those appointment times becoming smaller
and smaller, you know, where they're spending 5
minutes with their physician where they used to
maybe spend 30 minutes with their physician. And
then,
a lot of the feedback on studies and
research you see. It's about that. It's also
about they don't feel listen to. They don't
feel heard. And the neighbor does listen to
them and hear them in social media have
access to information that snap of a finger.
So I think you see this, you know,
a little bit of a dichotomy here where
people are really struggling with that and deciding
what to do because they... They're in pain.
They wanna answer, they want it fast, and
they don't wanna have wait 4 weeks to
see someone.
That's gonna spend 5 minutes with them and
not listen to them. So I think we
see that. Number 1.
A lot of studies also show that they
might source... Trust their physician, but they don't
trust the health care system. Right?
They don't trust the bill. They see the
bills coming in. Health care is expensive for
some people,
depending on what they're doing, it could be,
you know, recurring fees that they don't understand.
They they'll... It make some question things. So
I think when you put that all together,
people understand they need it and understand they
need to go see a physician, but they're
still questioning a lot of it today.
Absolutely. And kinda switching gears a bit. From
an organizational standpoint, do you have any strategies
in place aimed at helping bring in patients
or to help improve retention? Yeah.
Yes. We talk about this very often. It's
definitely
becoming a competitive landscape and always a challenge
to get new patients and and a couple
things we've done,
you know, 1 of thing think it starts
with service, You know, we can wanna talk
a little bit about trust in a moment.
But for me, I think as 1 industry
that probably does the worst at customer services
health care. I'm a consumer of health care,
your a consumer.
We affect members that consume and go see
a physician, quite often and, you know, the
complaints kinda stack up call center complaints, scheduling
complaints,
family build complaints. It's just... It seems like
we do a very bad job of delight
and and just really servicing the patient at
the end of day. When it comes all
the back office of stuff, the experience side.
So we spent a lot of time last
2 years. We started with our call center,
seems simple, But when I started 2 years
ago, I believe our... Answer rate took 10
minutes to get someone on the call to
reschedule appointment a reschedule appointment. I think we're
abandoning 30 percent of our phone call. So
they had to keep calling back in and
That's where we started. We hired up. We
redesigned the entire system, and we got to
where we wanted that call to be answered
within 30 seconds or less. And today, I
think we on average answer to call within
5 seconds. So immediately someone picks up. You
know, we don't abandon phone calls is that's
less than 2 percent. That's usually when the
patient hangs up because they... Dial wrong number
or whatnot. And so that's where we started,
and we also
reinvest a lot in the train, make sure
our our reps. When they answer the call,
they knew how to service the patient instead
of putting them on hold and these calls
lasting 20 minutes. So we spent a lot
of time on that. I think that's the
first point in contact for a lot of
our new patients in a lot of our
referral partners,
second, we actually spent a lot of time
with the referral partners, surveying them, asking them
how we could be better
servicing them, and we found 2 basic... Things,
medical records, they wanted access through them. When
they called, they wanted them immediately, and they
didn't like us charging for them, so we
cut up charging,
and we also created where we didn't have
to go through so many hoops to give
them the records they need to care for
the patient when they're seeing them. And then
secondly, feedback,
they would send a patient to us and
they would never hear anything. Unless the patient
showed up next month and in their own
office and they had a conversation. So we
tried to...
Create a system we're actually building it now
where it's
gonna automate feedback the referral source. So it
tells them that we contacted the patient. Tells
them when we schedule them,
also tells them when we cannot reach the
patient, or the patient declined our service, so
they can actually address that on the back
end. So we're trying to create, more feedback
in the loop and transparency that way, not
only your patients are experiencing
us in a meaningful powerful positive way, but
also our referral partner. So is helping bring
a new patients. We've seen drastic increase in
new patient volumes. It's doing a lot of
that.
And then marketing sales. I'll talk about what
the third thing and
know, we can move something else, but marketing
sales, I
I think the way we look at marketing
the sales and help here is very outdated.
Know, we we go doctor to the doctor,
We go to a law firm. But a
reality of the day because of that trust
factor. That we talked about earlier. You and
just all the information, you know, direct consumers
are getting themselves, we're really pushing for direct
consumer marketing and sales.
Simplifying that message.
You know, you've probably seen some of the
pain management websites and mine included, it's jargon.
It's confusing. And it's not simple for.
Really, anyone who doesn't understand this specialty to
really understand. So we're trying to really simplify
the message, deliver some videos that have animation
and really try to reach patients that might
be referred to also that might not know
pain and know what we can do to
really understand us and kind of combat some
of the false information they might see out
there as well.
Got it. And you've kinda given us some
pointers on how to improve patient retention, but
can you tell us why retention is so
important?
Yeah. Because care care is ongoing. You know,
my background in dialysis before this at Da,
obviously, you know, slightly very different
specialty, but we had to constantly see the
patient over again because it's always day to
day a living chronic disease that needed ongoing
treatment.
And our patients are complex, you know, pain
patients, you know, they have some mental health
issues potentially anxiety,
you know, they have other issues, you know,
and need more care beyond what we do
in 1 sitting once time. And so what
we try to communicate the patients is that,
yeah, you're gonna come to us, but it's
probably not gonna be 1 injection is gonna
solve all your problems and you're gonna time
go run that marathon that you wanna run
for next 10:20 years. It's gonna be an
ongoing conversation,
and we need that feedback from you and
we need to be able to kinda of
bring to the table
treatments and options to make sure you can
live the life you wanna live. So retention
is not just important for us as a
as a business as a organization, but really
it's most important for the patients to keep
coming back, know, that way, we can really
see how they're doing over time. Pain is
1 of the
more difficult
treatments or really track clinical outcomes because it's
really is something they deal. Right? It's, you
know, pain scores and they, you know, might
be a 10 out of 10 today. There
might be a 2 out of 10 tomorrow.
And so it's always moving shifting and, feel
events like a fall or a bump can
really impact it. And so we really need
to keep checking in and seeing them for
their own sake, make sure they can continue
live life. They wanna lift.
Absolutely. And you've already kind of touched on
the customer service aspect of health care and
how it affects the patient. But can you
tell me what... How that affects the staff?
Yeah. III yeah. Saw this question. I thought
it was a very interesting 1 in very.
But earth thoughtful 1 because it it does.
You know, we could talk about Covid and
impact since Covid on staff, but really with
the trust factor the earth person who experienced
it the most is person who's on the
other end of of the call, on on
the call center front desk person,
m may, they really get the brunt of
the frustration out of the doubt.
You know, we see it with billing. We've
had a very tough time having thoughtful and
meaningful conversations about collecting c and different bills
over the last... Couple years where we used
to not have so much difficult because they
question everything, which rightfully so.
And so we've had it really...
Think about the experience for a front desk,
the medical assistants and a lot of the
frontline staff that have to deal with those
questions in that frustration from patients at time.
In a lot of it comes, I didn't
mention earlier, but what we also see in
pain
is that people come to us with a
little bit of bias based on the past
care they received or have not received. You
know, they might have seen a primary care
who mistreated the pain before or gave us
some bad bad guidance. That just doesn't didn't
understand the specialty and what we can do
and A lot of times our front desk
have to deal with that too and where
they questioned them and questioned what we're doing
and it and really be a a really
high tense environment at times. And we've seen
an impact our turnover. We've seen an impact
our hiring and, you know, me personally and
something we're looking at Clear today. We don't
have it, you know, you know, like, many
of us completely solve or figured it out.
But we are thinking about throwing out the
playbook and redesign it because it seems the
way we approach staffing, hiring, training, rewarding, promoting
all this stuff. Really is outdated based on
a current consumer of health and what they
expect out of us. And so we're going
through a process right now really reevaluate that
and thinking outside of the box now, we
can do that to support our staff to
ultimately support a patient.
Absolutely. And when thinking about rebuilding this relationship,
where do you think the industry as a
whole should start?
Yeah. Great question.
No know, we talked about patient experience a
lot
in this podcast, and we've also talked about,
know, staffing. I think those are 2 main
things. So what I would... What I've been
thinking about lately in this and what we've
been saying as an organization is we as
an industry have gotten where it's been very
heavy provider first.
It and it's very important. Providers are very
important.
But a lot of the back office systems
are designed as support provider, not always the
patient.
And what I mean by that, you know,
we usually assign procedure scheduling into a doctor.
We signed call center to a doctor and
made to a doctor, and everything's built, the
ecosystems built around the physician. And not the
patient always.
And so
what we're trying to do today is really...
In what I would challenge the to do
is reevaluate that work flow to focus on
the patient journey to patient experience
from start to finish and really build tools
and that, you know, monitor that,
get feedback from the patient and ultimately make
changes to benefit the patient long. That's why
we're here. And I think too often we
we prioritize to focus so much on the
provider experience or schedule this and that and
the other, and it's is vital that we
do that. But I think times a patient
gets lost that journey. You know, I'll share
1 personal experience.
My wife recently,
you know, she has a rare genetics disorder,
and she had had eye surgery. And, you
know, first position we saw Wouldn't touch her
because the genetics order, she wasn't comfortable,
So we got a referral to a gentleman
in Houston texas actually, and he was phenomenal.
Expert made us feel comfortable.
But from that hand to his scheduler to
his team, was very bumpy for us. You
know, they wouldn't return our phone calls. They
took 4 weeks to call us, so we'd
call, they wouldn't call us back.
When they did call us they had wrong
information and so we had to go back
to position. It was just very, very bad
experience. And I note to the organization that
had made sense and worked for him in
his system and this schedule and he never
felt that impact that negatively, but we did.
And to a point where we almost decided
to start shopping around for another provider, but
schedule luckily we stayed with it. She had
surgeries. She she just had her second 1
last week, and she's doing well, but it...
That journey was for us, even seen it
to my wife's eyes. Very, very
anxious. She was very nervous, and it was
just very... It was unnecessary for the patient.
So just 1 example I think we really
need to focus on this coming here. Absolutely.
It's amazing how something as simple as answering
a phone call Or returning a phone call
can make such a huge difference. Completely completely.
Jonathan, I wanna thank you for your time
today. But before I let you go, is
there anything else that listeners Chanel? Oh, I
think we I think we covered it, but
you know, what, I I guess,
The only thing I will say is, you
know, I think, you know, this topic is
1, I do think we need to talk
more about. I'm an operator, not a clinician.
I see patients at the end of the
day, but still see patients at the end
of day. Right. I see their experience and
I I get the complaints I get the
stuff, and I see it through the eyes
of my staff. Sometimes I a deal with
those issues.
And I feel, you know, we're so eager
to talk about Ai and clinical decision making
tools and stuff which are phenomenal and are
needed in our industry. And
III do hope that, you know, we talk
more about this topic going forward who's is
super vital for an administration in industry and
and also for our patients. So
Absolutely. Well, Jonathan, I wanna thank you once
again for your time today for joining me
on Becker health care podcast. Yeah. Thank you.